Off topic -- (old) Jack LaLanne TV shows are on TV again !
March 12, 2004
Sports Media and Business: It's Like Jack LaLanne Never Left
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
"How often do you work out?" Jack LaLanne asked me.
"I don't," I said.
"You dummy!" he said by telephone
yesterday from Morro Bay, Calif.
LaLanne, the 89-year-old fitness master, began to order me
around.
"Are you sitting down?" he asked. "Good. Now stand up. Sit
down. Stand up. Sit down. Raise your butt a half-inch off
your chair. Sit. Again. Again. Now stretch your legs out,
bring your knees to your chest. Stretch. Bring your knees
up. Do it again. Again. Again. Where do you feel it? Good.
Make believe you're cycling. Go faster. Faster. Faster.
What do you feel? See what you can do just sitting in a
chair?"
LaLanne is absurdly fit and healthy, with a cholesterol
count he said is in the low 100's, and he is still making
us feel guilty for not eating right and for not exercising
enough. He exercises two hours a day and, like George
Foreman, is in the food business, selling his Power Juicer
so people can drink from the type of raw vegetable elixir
that he says has helped make him deliriously energetic and
has kept him off sweets since Prohibition.
"I'd like to see George lose 50 pounds," LaLanne said.
LaLanne began taunting me with fitness in the 1960's with
his nationally syndicated morning program. That muscular
man in the tight short-sleeve jumpsuit who used little more
than a chair, a broomstick, towels and a rubber cord turned
me into a slug. I couldn't bear it. Captain Kangaroo and
Courageous Cat never made me do leg extensions or told me
we were building up "Mother Nature's corset."
Since October, "The Jack LaLanne Show," which ran from 1951
to the mid-1980's, has been showing on ESPN Classic, at 7
a.m. Eastern.
"We have over 3,000 shows," LaLanne said. "I own
everything."
LaLanne predated Gilad, Richard Simmons and Denise Austin.
He was the first, doing it all in a spare studio,
exercising on the floor or on a chair. No nubile cuties in
tight bikinis. On yesterday's installment, he sang, cajoled
and showed how to steam broccoli so the nutrients aren't
poured down the drain. He demonstrated how to firm back
porches, executed a few ballet steps (he wore ballet
slippers) and pulled on his Glamour Stretcher cord (he said
he had sold 15 million of them).
"I've always wanted to come back," he said. "I wanted to
help people, and those shows had one thing in mind: helping
people. There are so many phonies in my profession.
Three-minute abs, and two-minute this. I work out two hours
a day. If I could do all this in three minutes, I'd have a
lot more time."
At ESPN Classic, there had been talk of bringing LaLanne
back, and the network, through a business associate, Richie
Orenstein, contacted LaLanne; his wife, Elaine; and their
son, Danny (seen in a new commercial hawking the Jack
LaLanne exercise mat). Through the first year, 130
half-hour LaLanne shows will be shown; starting April 1, a
10 a.m. replay will be added. "That'll finally be a decent
time in California," LaLanne said. "Then watch us fly."
Crowley Sullivan, the director of programming and
acquisitions for ESPN Classic, said: "We pay tribute to
American icons, and Jack is an American treasure. Without
him, Jane Fonda might be answering phones for John Kerry."
LaLanne's professional fitness career began in 1936 when
he opened a gym in Oakland, Calif., but it wasn't until
1951 that he came to television.
"A man in San Francisco, a Mr. Bartlett, was 90, and he
invented a tablet that he attributed his longevity to," he
said. The manager of a San Francisco television station,
KGO, encouraged LaLanne to try out for a fitness program
with the tablet as the endorsement. "He said, `Hey, Froggy,
go to Hollywood and audition.' What did I know about
television? So I sent a woman who ran the women's
department in my gym - I'd taken 100 pounds off her."
But the manager called and said, "Froggy, they want you,' "
LaLanne said.
. In Hollywood, he spoke to the producer, a man with a big
gut sitting in a chair in a fancy office. "He asked me what
I'd do if I had a fitness show," LaLanne said. "So I said,
`Bring your knees into your chest, bring them out, do a
couple more.' He said, `I feel that in my stomach.' I gave
him exercises for his arms and chest, just sitting in his
chair. `What else would you do?' he asked. `I'd do a
motivational tip and a nutritional tip.' "
The producer's response was "I've found my man," LaLanne
said.
The sponsor's longevity pill sold poorly. "He ran out of
money, and I'm stuck with a TV show," LaLanne said. "I had
my back against the wall." But he persuaded Yammy Yogurt to
be his new sponsor. "It tasted terrible, so I mixed it with
prune juice and fruits," he said. "Nobody thought about it
until then. We made the guy a millionaire."
LaLanne's longevity and health is such that he wants to
celebrate his 90th birthday in September with a marathon
dive from Catalina Island to Long Beach.
"No way," Elaine LaLanne said. "I tell him, `You won't have
a wife, honey.' "
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company. |
